DANCE REVIEW

DANCE REVIEW; Sketch for an Urban Ode With Rap and Jazz

By ANNA KISSELGOFF

Published: July 10, 2000

DURHAM, N.C., July 7—
The guiding spirits behind the theater of mixed forms are often choreographers.

Theatrical directors may not be able to choreograph, but a dance-trained artist is used to conceiving the integration of movement with rhythm: the rhythm of music and even words, spoken or sung. That is what Jane Comfort, one of the most fertile minds in this genre, has realized so effectively in the first part of what she calls a three-act ''dance-opera.''

The entire piece, directed and choreographed by Ms. Comfort, will be called ''Asphalt.'' So was its first act, which was commissioned by the American Dance Festival and presented in Reynolds Industries Theater at the festival's home here at Duke University. At this point it is a sketch for an urban ode, the beginning of a tale about a homeless disc jockey whose repressed memories promise to be revealed throughout ''Asphalt.''

The characters from his past were not yet fleshed out in this performance on Wednesday. Yet Ms. Comfort and Carl Hancock Rux, who wrote the lyrics of the songs and the book (with ''dramaturgy'' by Morgan Jenness), have already produced a polished nonlinear narrative. The layers of meaning, evoked in a rap and jazz style, promise to unpeel as the tale unfolds.

Manchild, the lead singer and writer for the hip-hop band Urban Folklore, portrays the ingeniously named hero, Racine. Like the French playwright of that name, he is in search of the unities of time and place. Homeless, he is picked up by the equally wonderfully-named Couchette. Aleta Hayes is this stripper, who tells him, ''I am a modern dancer, aesthetically.''

He says, ''I like your music.''

She retorts, ''Don't be abstract.''

In their street-smart dialogue, words and dancing are not separated. As Racine talks and moves his arms in curves, the shapes become abstractions of his turntable spinning. Ms. Hayes, stunning and swivel-hipped in a long, undulating dance with wide leg swings, keeps asking Racine, ''What do you remember?'' He repeatedly replies, ''Nothing.''

Yet the structure fits pieces of his memory together through intercutting images, always amplified in dance by a small karate-kicking chorus (Cynthia Bueschel, Stephen Nunley, Elizabeth Haselwood). Julius Hollingsworth imposes his grand theatrical presence as a suspect preacher. He tears pages from a Bible and claims a pregnant woman is his 14-year-old niece, portrayed with sullen innocence by Nakia. As she lies in a bloodied dress, the agony of her birth-giving is duplicated by Racine, contorted in kinetic empathy. It is up to Irene Datcher, serene in her jazz-flavored aria, to tell Racine that the girl was his mother.

One has to wait for further installments to make sense of minor characters who pass through the tenement that Couchette describes as the symbol of Racine's past. With music by Toshi Reagon, DJ Spooky and Foosh, ''Asphalt'' could be called dance theater or music theater. If it is a dance-opera, it is chamber size.

But as Ms. Comfort showed on the same program in ''Underground River,'' previously seen in New York, an inner life can be defined with imaginative simplicity. In this poignant piece the lively abstract dances performed by Ms. Hayes, Ms. Bueschel, Ms. Haselwood, Mr. Nunley and a tiny cloth puppet created by Basil Twist become metaphors for a spirit that slips away. The cumulative emotion brought the audience to its feet.

Long the prime center for experiment in modern dance, the festival has never defined what modern dance must be. Ms. Comfort exemplifies these open frontiers. They were symbolized as well by the disparate teachers and choreographers honored with the festival's teaching award, the Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Chairs for Distinguished Teaching. The recipients were Mary Anthony, Jane Dudley, Sophie Maslow and Walter Nicks.

Photo: Manchild and Aleta Hayes performing in Jane Comfort's ''Asphalt'' at the American Dance Festival. (Bruce R. Feeley for The New York Times)